Jason Wilson

Bill Bryson

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

The extraordinary popularity of books and magazines dedicated to travel comes as no surprise, given that more and more Americans are traveling each year for business, pleasure, and especially adventure. Our fascination with travel has never been so well represented as in this new addition to the Best American series: a wide-ranging compendium of the best travel writing published in 1999, culled from more than three hundred magazines, newspapers, and Web sites.
This first collection of THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING reads like a good novel. Best-selling author Bill Bryson and series editor Jason Wilson have put together a book that will surprise knowledgeable travelers and entrance newcomers with the glories of new worlds. Articles by such well-loved writers as Bill Buford and Ryszard Kapuscinski are included, as are those by exciting new voices. Ranging across myriad landscapes, from Central Park in New York City to the Ouadane oasis in Saharan Mauritania, THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000 showcases the diversity and creative power of travel writing today.

The Best American Travel Writing 2000

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Rebecca Romney

J. P. Romney

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Irreverent Stories from Book History

A funny and entertaining history of printed books as told through absurd moments in the lives of authors and printers, collected by television’s favorite rare-book expert from HISTORY’s hit series Pawn Stars. Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn’t been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer’s Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing, and makes clear that we’ve succeeded despite ourselves. Rare-book expert Rebecca Romney and author J. P. Romney take us from monasteries and museums to auction houses and libraries to introduce curious episodes in the history of print that have had a profound impact on our world. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on it. Today, Johannes Gutenberg is recognized as the father of Western printing. But for the first few hundred years after the invention of the printing press, no one knew who printed the first book. This long-standing mystery took researchers down a labyrinth of ancient archives and libraries, and unearthed surprising details, such as the fact that Gutenberg’s financier sued him, repossessed his printing equipment, and started his own printing business afterward. Eventually the first printed book was tracked to the library of Cardinal Mazarin in France, and Gutenberg’s forty-two-line Bible was finally credited to him, thus ensuring Gutenberg’s name would be remembered by middle-school students worldwide. Like the works of Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, and Ken Jennings, Printer’s Error is a rollicking ride through the annals of time and the printed word.

Printer's Error

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Father Michael’s Lottery

Jameson Currier

"Raised by a brutally stern, religious father in a small Southern town, Robbie Taylor arrives in New York City in 1978 as an optimistic, romantic, young man with a circle of new friends and begins a personal odyssey into enlightenment as he navigates through the hedonism of his youth." "At the heart of Robbie's new life in New York are his lovers and friends: Denise, a lesbian artist who yearns to understand and experience motherhood; Vince, a playwright who shepherds Robbie into gay culture and, eventually, activism; Jeff, a too-handsome actor with an enigmatic spiritual quest; and Nathan, who becomes Robbie's lover just as the AIDS epidemic becomes the epicenter of their world. Robbie's losses mount, the world around him is ravaged and his faith is continually tested like a modern-day Job. Virtually defeated, he leaves Manhattan for Los Angeles where he attempts to repair his shattered life and where he hopes to find solace from his haunted yearnings."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Where the Rainbow Ends

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Reynolds Price

Leaving Home, Coming Back

Award-winning novelist Reynolds Price provides a vivid portrait of his life in the mid-1950s leading up to the publication of his brilliant first novel A Long and Happy Life—detailing his time as a Rhodes scholar, writer, and a teacher.

Ardent Spirits

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James-Brent Styan

Christiaan Barnard and the First Heart Transplant

In this new biography of Chris Barnard we not only learn about the life of South Africa's most famous surgeon, from his Beaufort West childhood through his studies locally and abroad to his prominent marriages - and divorces - but James Styan also examines the impact of the historic heart transplant on Barnard's personal life and South African society at large, where apartheid legislation often made the difficulties of medicine even more convoluted. The role of black medical staff like Hamilton Naki is explored, as is the intense rivalry that arose between other famous heart surgeons and Barnard. How did Barnard manage to beat them all in this race of life and death? How much did his famous charisma have to do with it all? And in the light of his later years, his subsequent successes and considerable failures, what is Barnard's legacy today? Styan covers it all in this fascinating new account of a real heartbreaker.

Heartbreaker

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Scott Turow

An ambitious personal injury lawyer, Robbie Feaver finds his less-than-ethical practices coming back to haunt him when, in exchange for leniency from prosecution, he is forced into an uneasy alliance with an enigmatic female FBI agent, in a story of greed, human weakness, love, and unexpected heroism. 750,000 first printing.

Personal Injuries

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Mariane Pearl

Sarah Crichton

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

The Inside Story of the Al Qaeda Kidnapping of Danny Pearl

Daniel Pearl's wife tells the story of her deceased husband, who was murdered in Pakistan while on assignment for the Wall Street Journal.

A Mighty Heart

30255296-cf58-44f8-a689-03f66243958f-1

Douglas Rogers

A Memoir of Zimbabwe

An award-winning journalist traces the story of his family's game farm in war-torn Zimbabwe, where his parents were forced to take increasingly extreme measures to stay alive against the forces of the Mugabe regime and their land-reclamation efforts.

The Last Resort

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Phyllis Rose

S246, c1993, Book in Excellent Condition, Dust Jacket has adhesive on back & price snipped inside front cover

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Culled from the autobiographies, journals, and memoirs of some of this centuries most prominent women, this celebration of women's lives includes the work of Isak Dinesen, Maya Angelou, Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf, Annie Dillard, and others.

The Norton Book of Women's Lives

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Alan Bennett

An instant bestseller in the U.K., Untold Stories brings together the finest and funniest writing by one of England's best-known literary figures. In his first major collection since Writing Home, Alan Bennett opens with a poignant memoir of growing up in Leeds and closes with an account of his cancer diagnosis and recovery, with everything from his much-celebrated essays to his irreverent comic pieces and reviews in between.

Untold Stories

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Henry Langrehr

Jim DeFelice

An American Paratrooper's Extraordinary Memoir of Escape, Survival, and Heroism in the Last Days of World War II

Published to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, an unforgettable never-before-told first-person account of World War II: the true story of an American paratrooper who survived D-Day, was captured and imprisoned in a Nazi work camp, and made a daring escape to freedom. 



Now at 95, one of the few living members of the Greatest Generation shares his experiences at last in one of the most remarkable World War II stories ever told. As the Allied Invasion of Normandy launched in the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944, Henry Langrehr, an American paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, was among the thousands of Allies who parachuted into occupied France. Surviving heavy anti-aircraft fire, he crashed through the glass roof of a greenhouse in Sainte-Mère-Église. While many of the soldiers in his unit died, Henry and other surviving troops valiantly battled enemy tanks to a standstill. Then, on June 29th, Henry was captured by the Nazis. The next phase of his incredible journey was beginning.

Kept for a week in the outer ring of a death camp, Henry witnessed the Nazis' unspeakable brutality--the so-called Final Solution, with people marched to their deaths, their bodies discarded like cords of wood. Transported to a work camp, he endured horrors of his own when he was forced to live in unbelievable squalor and labor in a coal mine with other POWs. Knowing they would be worked to death, he and a friend made a desperate escape. When a German soldier cornered them in a barn, the friend was fatally shot; Henry struggled with the soldier, killing him and taking his gun. Perilously traveling westward toward Allied controlled land on foot, Henry faced the great ethical and moral dilemmas of war firsthand, needing to do whatever it took to survive. Finally, after two weeks behind enemy lines, he found an American unit and was rescued.

Awaiting him at home was Arlene, who, like millions of other American women, went to work in factories and offices to build the armaments Henry and the Allies needed for victory. Whatever It Took is her story, too, bringing to life the hopes and fears of those on the homefront awaiting their loved ones to return.

A tale of heroism, hope, and survival featuring 30 photographs, Whatever It Took is a timely reminder of the human cost of freedom and a tribute to unbreakable human courage and spirit in the darkest of times. 



Whatever It Took

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Melissa de la Cruz

"In the final installment of the Blue Bloods series, the young vampires of Manhattan must make terrible sacrifices in order to triumph over Lucifer and the Silver Bloods"--

Gates of Paradise (a Blue Bloods Novel)

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Christopher Bram

The Gay Writers Who Changed America

In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life. Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and history. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater. James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic. Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist. And the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture. But the change was only beginning. A new generation of gay writers followed, taking more risks and writing about their sexuality more openly. Edward Albee brought his prickly iconoclasm to the American theater. Edmund White laid bare his own life in stylized, autobiographical works. Armistead Maupin wove a rich tapestry of the counterculture, queer and straight. Mart Crowley brought gay men's lives out of the closet and onto the stage. And Tony Kushner took them beyond the stage, to the center of American ideas. With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men's ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative. Chronicling over fifty years of momentous change-from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond-EMINENT OUTLAWS is an inspiring, illuminating tale: one that reveals how the lives of these men are crucial to understanding the social and cultural history of the American twentieth century.

Eminent Outlaws

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Suzanne Collins

The Final Book of the Hunger Games

Mockingjay

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Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees

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Ferenc Mate

A Novel

A spellbinding tale of the sea: love, murder, and mysticism. At the turn of the century, a Kwakiutl warrior from British Columbia's wild northern islands raids an artifact collector's yacht to reclaim stolen sacred masks. He takes the collector's wife, Kate, as hostage on his 200-mile canoe voyage home. The collector hires Dugger, a coastal trader living on the edges of the law, to give chase in his ketch with the collector as passenger, but Dugger's financial salvation comes at a terrible price, for he is Kate's secret lover. Day and night Dugger sails the uncharted islands, through raging currents and ship-swallowing whirlpools, and the account of his pursuit is interwoven with Kate's harrowing and erotically charged journey. Based on a true story, this novel reaches its thrilling climax at the last secret, hallucinatory potlatch of the ancient Kwakiutl culture, where the history of a doomed people is melded with the fury of three hearts.

Ghost Sea

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Janet Wallach

Hetty Green in the Gilded Age

No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green, America’s first female tycoon. A strong woman who forged her own path, she was worth at least $100 million by the end of her life in 1916—equal to about $2.5 billion today. Green was mocked for her simple Quaker ways and her unfashionable frugality in an era of opulence and excess; the press even nicknamed her “The Witch of Wall Street.” But those who knew her admired her wit and wisdom, and while financiers around her rose and fell as financial bubbles burst, she steadily amassed a fortune that supported businesses, churches, municipalities, and even the city of New York. Janet Wallach’s engrossing biography reveals striking parallels between past financial crises and current recession woes, and speaks not only to history buffs but to today’s investors, who just might learn a thing or two from Hetty Green.

The Richest Woman in America

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James MacGregor Burns

The Soldier of Freedom, 1940-1945

The divisions between a man of ideals and a protector of presidential authority is the focus of this detailed study of Roosevelt during the difficult war years.

Roosevelt

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Joseph Olshan

Russell Todaro, a young American translator, moves to Paris to take stock of his life and goals only to further lose himself in the surprising twists fate has in store for him. One night, two men waving guns and knives break and enter their Paris hotel room, terrorizing Russell and his much older companion, a famous American poet named Edward Cannon. The intruders, not finding what they seemingly expected, leave without further incident but the baffling, traumatic events overwhelm Cannon who dies in his sleep later that night. Now Russell is left to ponder the meaning of the attack, what to do with the poet’s unfinished, problematic memoir and, perhaps most importantly, how to reconstruct and move forward with his own life. Hearing of the disturbing circumstances of Cannon’s death, an Italian writer, Marina Vezzoli, invites Russell to recuperate at her villa in Tuscany. But what at first seems like a generous invitation slowly reveals itself to be a calculated offer. As Russell’s stay in Italy lengthens, he begins to realize that the people in his life are using or manipulating him, most of all the poet’s New York publishers who, against the dying man’s wishes, are trying to acquire his unfinished manuscript. Looming over everything is the long and fascinating legacy of Villa Guidi, where during Word War II a Jewish family hid in the subterranean floors, later undergoing a conversion to Catholicism. In an echo of this dramatic history, Russell is forced to undergo a conversion of his own in order to find redemption and meaning in his life.]

The Conversion

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Merrill J. Collett

A Spiritual and Practical Guide to Caring for the Dying at Home

A step-by-step guide to caring for a terminally ill loved one offers practical nursing skills, effective pain treatments, and tips on handling visitors.

Stay Close and Do Nothing

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Michael Bliss

A Life in Surgery

Drawing on new collections of intimate personal and family papers, diaries and patient records, Michael Bliss captures Cushings professional and his personal life in remarkable detail. Bliss paints an engaging portrait of a man of ambition, boundless, driving energy, a fanatical work ethic, a penchant for self-promotion and ruthlessness, more than a touch of egotism and meanness, and an enormous appetite for life. Equally important, Bliss traces the rise of American surgery as seen through the eyes of one of its pioneers. The book describes how Cushing, working in the early years of the 20th century, developed remarkable new techniques that let surgeons open the skull, expose the brain, and attack tumors--all with a much higher rate of success than previously known.

Harvey Cushing

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Gabriel García Márquez

Edith Grossman

The author traces his life from his birth in 1927 to his 1950 proposal to his wife, discussing such topics as his love for Colombia, the impact of literature and music on his life, and how his written works reflect his life.

Living to Tell the Tale

313bca86-5f1b-4823-af3b-ffa5f682ace8-1

Daniel Menaker

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The author of The Treatment traces his literary life as a longtime editor at The New Yorker and Random House, detailing his early days as a fact checker and the people that influenced his career as well as the losses and family life that shaped his achievements as a writer. 30,000 first printing.

My Mistake

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PugMotherBooks

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Jason Wilson (Series Editor); Bill Bryson (Editor)